Good post as always petasux. When I was a kid and growing up in the 50's and 60's my parents always told me get out of the house and do something. We played kickball, baseball, basketball, football, hockey, whiffleball and had some great games of hide and seek. When all the kids in my area got around 12 we all had bb guns and were allowed to hunt for chipmunks, birds and frogs. Summer afternoons were always on the river fishing and we got there by bike. No sitting around playing video games or watching TV. There were always things to do. When it did get time to get out on the first solo hunt I feel I was prepared for all of it and had been taught all about sportsmanship, woodsmanship and the animals by my father and uncles. Back then everyone hunted and they even let you out of school to go to a family deer camp. Times have changed and so have many of the kids. Today lots of the kids around here have gone through hunters ed but their parents don’t hunt. I was turkey hunting on private land this spring and passed on 3 jakes that came into my calling. I watched them work their way out to the middle of a field and was enjoying the day. All at once I could see 2 hunters running towards the jakes and when they got 60 yards from them started to shoot at the running jakes. They were on private land that only I had permission to be on and so I went right out there to confront them. It turned out they were two 15 year old kids from the area and how they didn’t shoot each other running and firing the guns in a mystery. I lit into them for trespassing first then really did a number on them for the way they were hunting which goes against every common sense and ethical rule there is. I sent them home and told them I was going to talk with their parents about what a poor job they did in teaching the kids right from wrong. The mother of course blamed it all on the cousin and said her kid was always getting in trouble when he was with him. Later on in the fall I passed a popular pulloff near an open piece of land and saw the 2 kids along with two more of their high school friends getting out, loading their rifles and heading out to hunt. No muzzle control and you could tell from the way they were going into the woods they were going in to drive deer in a small patch. I can’t imagine all the unsafe things that happened that day. They were legal to hunt, had passed hunter ed but didn’t have a clue about how to ethically and safely go hunting.